Chapter Text
Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce THE GRANADA HOLMES REWATCH!
Some benevolent soul has digitized all of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series from the 1980s, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke as Watson, and some other benevolent soul put up a master post with links to all the episodes on line. This is exactly what I need at this juncture in my life. My president is a lunatic, my country is in chaos, the planet is frying, and Granada Holmes is going to get me through it all. In addition to its many beauties, Granada Holmes takes me back to my adolescence, a time which was very troubled for me when I was living through it, but which in retrospect seems like paradise. Jeremy Brett was my first TV Holmes. I love Sherlock; but Brett will always be Holmes in my heart. Brett and Burke were the team that inspired my first ever Holmes/Watson fanfic, “Absurdly Simple,” back in the 1990s. To see them on screen again makes me feel genuinely happy, regardless of all the crap going on right now.
And yet, I never finished the series. The change in Watsons was too much for me; I stopped following it after “The Final Problem.” This time, I mean to see the thing through. So some of these episodes are old friends, and some will be, to me, brand new.
I will occasionally be referencing Sherlock, because this series was obviously an influence on that show; but these posts should still be enjoyable and accessible to people with no knowledge of Sherlock. And now, let me favor you with my thoughts upon re-viewing the episode that introduced Jeremy Brett’s Holmes and David Burke’s Watson to a soon-to-be adoring public: “A Scandal In Bohemia.”
The big news with Granada Holmes was that they were supposed to be doing adaptations of the actual Conan Doyle stories, instead of taking the characters of Holmes and Watson and writing new plots for them. That’s what most theatrical, film, and TV adaptations had done up to that point. With the exception of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was turned into quite a number of film adaptations, people mostly weren’t interested in dramatizing Doyle’s actual stories. It’s easy enough to see why; the short stories are often so compressed that it’s hard to see how you’d get a full-length film or even an hour-long episode out of them, the plotting is often sort of shoddy, and the preoccupations of late Victorians didn’t necessarily match up with those of twentieth-century viewers.
In fact, the Granada team often had trouble getting an hour’s worth of TV out of a single story without padding it or introducing laughably extraneous “action” sequences like the train chase at the end of “Greek Interpreter” (more on that in its own good time). But the better scripts were able to seize Doyle’s missed opportunities and add nuance and development that Doyle didn’t have the time for. “A Scandal in Bohemia,” since it’s the introductory episode, has plenty of work to do, so it keeps the pace up pretty well. Even better, it invests most of the extra time in character development, which is the real strength of the Granada project. Granada’s production values were pretty good (at the time) for heritage TV–but they don’t stand up that well in the twenty-first century. There is also some unevenness in the acting. Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson are all fantastic all the time. The guest stars are a mixed bag. Wolf Kahler–charitably described on IMDB as “a German-born character actor–is underwhelming as the King of Bohemia, and although Gayle Hunnicutt is lovely as Irene Adler, she’s not really as good as the part they wrote for her.
And this brings me to the two things I appreciate most, on rewatch, about “A Scandal In Bohemia.” One is the work everyone’s done to build the foundation for Holmes and Watson’s relationship, which is just delicious; and the other is that this is really the only adaptation I’ve seen that does justice to the canon Irene Adler instead of essentially rewriting her with whatever the adapter thinks is a modern “strong woman” (Moffat, I’m lookin’ at you).
What this adaptation gets, and what most others don’t, is that although Irene Adler is Holmes’s adversary in this story, she is not the criminal or the villain. That role is owned by Holmes’s client. The King of Bohemia had an affair with an unattached and unprotected American woman, dumped her, and is now so terrified of having to suffer the consequences of his own behavior that he is willing to do just about anything to get the incriminating photograph off Irene Adler. The Granada episode begins with two of the King’s hired goons ransacking Irene Adler’s house in the dead of night, ripping open her furniture and paintings with knives as they search for the photograph. This is only one of the many completely illegal things the King admits to doing to Irene Adler during his interview with Holmes (in ACD canon and in this adaptation). She eventually appears to chase the burglars off with a pistol. After they’ve fled, she looks up at the large oil painting of herself (it’s a terrible painting; I don’t know why the producers of period drama can’t bring themselves to pay for decent fake oil portraits, but they’re universally disappointing) and you can see how hurt and shocked she is by the symbolic violence. And that’s the canon Irene Adler: a strong woman in an extremely vulnerable position. She’s cunning, bold, clever, pistol-packing, trouser-wearing etc., in self-defense. It’s established in the King’s first interview that Irene Adler is not really a blackmailer in the ordinary sense of the word; the King has tried to buy the photograph but she won’t sell it. What she wants is for him to marry her and not someone else. As soon as she doesn’t want that any more, she’s done. In this adaptation, they underline that by showing her tossing The Photograph from the deck of the ship in which she and Godfrey are sailing for the Continent, like Rose throwing away the Heart of the Ocean.
This is important, because it explains Holmes’s growing admiration for Irene Adler as something other than a sexual attraction. Holmes does comment on her beauty, but when an evidently surprised Watson repeats, “A face a man might die for?!” he dismisses it as “a metaphor.” For him, her beauty is not superficial; it’s the outward sign of more intangible qualities. There’s a moment early on when Holmes, disguised as an alcoholic and unemployed groom, is watching Irene Adler’s house and hears her singing. Irene Adler is identified in canon as a contralto. They actually found a contralto to do the singing. Her voice is beautiful, strong, and lower than you would expect; and Holmes is immediately taken by it. When the still-disguised Holmes finds himself drawn into the secret wedding, and she calls him over afterward to give him a sovereign, he is genuinely touched by her generosity–not just in giving him the coin, but in protecting his dignity by calling it a “souvenir.” During the “fire” scene, Holmes (as the poor old parson) has a conversation with Irene Adler about motives in which she rather pointedly tells him that she “cannot imagine” being motivated by a desire for revenge, and he obviously believes her. By the end of the episode, when Holmes says that Irene Adler is “on a very different level to your Majesty,” he doesn’t just mean that she’s smarter; he means that in basically every way she is a better person. She’s compassionate and gracious to those ‘below’ her in the social hierarchy; he’s contemptuous and abusive. She’s motivated by love; he’s motivated by self-interest. She appreciates music and art; he apparently only appreciates money, power, and sex. She’s capable of being magnanimous to a defeated adversary; everything we know about the King suggests that he likes to grind his own adversaries into the dirt.
So given all this…why is Holmes working for this dirtbag?
Watching this adaptation again, I was struck by how much this story sort of predicts the hardboiled detective phenomenon. Holmes doesn’t take this case because he thinks it’s the right thing to do; he takes it because he needs the work. The need is partly financial–”There’s money in this case, Watson, if there’s nothing else,” he says, as he watches the King’s horses and carriage pull up–and partly psychological. The adapters have transplanted to the beginning of this episode a chunk of the opening of The Sign of Four in which Watson takes Holmes to task over his drug use; so before the King shows up we get the “my mind rebels at stagnation” speech. Holmes is pretty explicit about the fact that taking this case is part of his treatment plan.
Holmes is never for a moment under the illusion that he’s on the side of the angels in this case. He is engaged in the cynical exercise of helping someone with a lot of power and money cover his ass, at the expense of a woman armed only with her wit and charm. One of tne of the most enjoyable things about Brett’s performance in this episode is how consistently he telegraphs Holmes’s contempt for his own client. The consultation scene is fantastic in that regard. Watson, once he finds out that the client is a King, starts trying to do all the royalty protocols; Holmes pointedly doesn’t give a shit. The King wants to wear a mask and call himself the Count von Kramm; Holmes addresses him as “your Majesty.” The King doesn’t want Watson there; Holmes tells him “it is both or none.” He mentions that the King has “killed four opponents” in duels; the King says “All of them honorably;” Holmes just laughs. I particularly love the moment when Holmes is running through all the reasons why this isn’t really a problem, and the King is responding to them. At first Holmes is dismissive; then, as he starts to realize the King hasn’t told him everything, you see Brett leaning forward with the gleam in his eye, gesturing impatiently at him, come on, come on, out with it. Holmes asks the King for money up front, something he hardly ever does–partly to get the money, of course, but also to send the King a message: please do not allow yourself to believe even for a moment that I’m taking this case for any other reason. Certainly not because I’m honored to be consulted by a guy with a title; and definitely not because I give a damn about you. When they part company at Irene Adler’s house, the King offers Holmes his hand to shake. No doubt for the King this is a great moment of magnanimous condescension. Holmes turns and walks away from it; Watson shakes it.
And this brings us to Holmes and Watson.
What can I say? This is the shit, right here. This is the H/W relationship against which all others eventually pale in comparison. Watson’s voiceover announces that the Granada team has decided to change the overall story arc, and Priority #1 was eliminating Watson’s marriage. Watson says that at the time of the case, he and Holmes had been living together for “some years.” He also says that every time he leaves Holmes for “any length of time,” he comes back dreading Holmes’s “moods.” As soon as he gets inside, he starts asking Mrs. Hudson about how Holmes is doing, and it doesn’t sound great. He goes up expecting the worse, sees the syringe in a half-opened drawer, gets righteously pissed off, and decides to just start right in: “Which is it tonight? Morphine or cocaine?”
What I love about this is how quickly both of these actors establish the depth of the relationship. Watson’s reaction to the sight of the syringe is so intense and so immediate that you know this has been source of conflict for them for a long time. Holmes reacts in what he knows will be a maddeningly understated way. As the conversation develops, we realize that there are other layers to this. Watson is angry partly because he’s coming home from a long trip and instead of getting to just settle in and enjoy being warm and dry and cozy, they have to have THIS argument again. The running gag started in this episode about Watson’s appetite–he’s always hungry, and Holmes never is, and it seems like at all times Watson is devoting significant bandwidth to ensuring his own access to food–stands in for a more poignant disappointment: coming home to Holmes is never as comforting as Watson wants it to be. There are always the “moods” to deal with–moods which, it appears, are partly Holmes’s way of getting back at Watson for leaving him in the first place. Holmes even implies, at the end of this confrontation, that he left the syringe visible on purpose: “You my close that drawer. You have made the wrong diagnosis, Doctor! This is my stimulant.” And he hands him the King of Bohemia’s letter.
At some point during all this, Holmes indicates a box of cigars, and says, “you see, I was not unmindful of your return.” The way Brett does that, melancholy with just a touch of petulance, just says so much. He knows Watson wants something from him he’s not providing; he’s pained at being unable to provide it; he provides instead what he can, which is the box of cigars and the chance of another adventure. And at least for right now, it’s enough. Look at Watson’s face in that image up top. Holmes has just told him that he’s going to need Watson’s help for this dangerous mission; and Watson literally sits up straighter in his chair, all eagerness and attention. He’s so proud that Holmes wants him. After reading the King’s letter, Watson says, rather sadly, that the client clearly won’t want him around and he should go, and Holmes tells him, very clearly: no. I need you. Stay. Well, actually, what he says is, “I am lost without my Boswell.” They give you a nice closeup on Brett’s face as he says it, and it just makes your heart go AAAAAAH!!!
So this is what keeps the Granada Holmes first in my heart. In about 15 minutes they establish a long-term relationship with many emotional layers and all kinds of intimacy between the two of them, and everything else is really just gravy. Now I will warn anyone who hasn’t seen these before that you will occasionally get a mood-breaking bad surprise from the production values. For instance, someone in the costume department was having a bad day when they got the order for the King’s outfit:
Honestly he looks like he is on the way to a Victorian-themed BDSM party. Even worse, the director decided to do a whole Blindfold Motif thing:
This is the blindfolded orchestra playing while the King and Irene dance; and then there’s this:
Honestly, I can’t tell whether this is supposed to be a fic prompt, or…well, no, I know that it’s supposed to symbolize Holmes’s love for disguise, which is certainly indulged in this episode. There are several scenes of Holmes taking off his diguises and washing his face and hands in a basin while talking to Watson. The production team obviously loved the “master of disguise” thing and Brett really threw himself into it. His Holmes really is an actor, and a rare one. And if you want to imagine what he did with that mask after the King went home, don’t let me stop you.